The Catholic Herald skriver at selv om de fleste eksperte tippet helt feil ved årets pavevalg, var noen av de beste italienske kjennerne klar over hva som kunne skje:
…. In fact, five ballots were enough to make a visibly stunned Bergoglio the successor of St Peter – only one more than was necessary to elect his predecessor, and three fewer than it took to elect John Paul II in 1978. So the pundits were wrong, myself included. Or were they?
In fact, some of the best-informed Italian journalists had noticed that his name was recurring in the talk during the final days of the build-up. Andrea Tornielli, that oracle among vaticanologists, not only mentioned him on the morning the conclave began, but later the same day brazenly offered his own version of the state of the deliberations still under way among the sequestered cardinals.
As all know, the participants in a conclave are vowed to the strictest secrecy. Nonetheless, once it is over the details usually come out in dribs and drabs until something like a clear picture can be formed. It is now known that Bergoglio was the only other serious contended to rival Ratzinger in 2005. Tornielli, however, seemed to have inside information even as the voting proceeded. Perhaps this was merely a priori calculation on the basis of information obtained beforehand, but in any case, Tornielli’s analysis proved remarkable prescient. He averred confidently that there was a deadlock in the conclave, but he mentioned Bergoglio, along with Scola and Ouellet, as one of the three front-runners. …